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Resetting Xbox

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Re: Resetting Xbox

#671

Post by robertlagrant »

jerf wrote: post #155
johnnyanmac wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Microsoft really wanted Game Pass to be a steam competitor which is pretty much what everyone in the industry tries to do and fails. Gamepass is quite literally the most anti-steam strategy ever. It's a massive loss leading (or rather, low margin leading) service relying on a pseudo-rental service to provide value. Steam got to where it is by keeping all its costs lean and developing a service around taking a cut fr…

I wrote a while ago about how companies seem to have gotten the idea into their head that subscriptions are unconditionally good, rather than a contingent good based on the exact circumstances of the subscription: https://jerf.org/iri/post/2023/streampocalypse-and-first-pri... Gamepass as a subscription to make sure you always have something to play, that has a lot of old games or indie games and other games that hav…

> So if you put your new game that you would have sold for $60-80 dollars to me directly and it translates to three weeks of engagement on your $15-ish/month (depending on level) subscription, it's hard to see how that is an economic win. Put that game on Gamepass in a year or two, sure, that can make sense, but on release?

I think that's what I thought it would be, too. XboX has a really good track record of backwards compatibility. I can (and do, occasionally) play 360 games on my series X.

A model where people can buy the latest games, can not only keep them but play them forever on future consoles, and can have access to an increasingly vast back catalogue of older games, seems like a huge win. And maybe each full price new game gets them a bit of a discount on their next month's game pass, to make it slightly better value than the playstation equivalent full priced game.

But they didn't seem to want to do anything like that.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#672

Post by tpxl »

account42 wrote: post #659
healsdata wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There hasn't been a time when developers have been more disconnected from their audience than now. There are studios that routinely put out games that people love. For example, my wife and I will happily pre-order the next co-op game from Hazelight Studios. FromSoftware, Ghost Ship Games, and others fall into the same boat for many people. The difference, in my opinion, is that games from these studios don't focus…

For games like Starfield, monetization isn't even the main issue but rather political ideology. You can only do so much ESG-approved preaching before customers go elsewhere.

For games like Starfield, the problem is the game is bad, it has nothing to do with politics or ESG.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#673

Post by robertlagrant »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #498
bombcar wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, they set themselves up for "the only people who subscribe are those who use/abuse the subscription" - which is a recipe for failure.

by that logic then every subscription is a dud since they could just use heavily in few months and cancel for the rest of the year but that's not happen in reality, people forgot to cancel

I see what you mean, but I think gamers on a budget will cancel. Other gamers would've paid full price for 12 games and instead paid $15 each for 12 games.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#674

Post by Krasnol »

LtdJorge wrote: post #661
slg wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We want to do more with fewer resources. Who is the "we" here? Because the profit margin not being high enough is certainly not a problem for consumers. The only people who should care about that are the company's shareholders and "shareholders" certainly isn't synonymous with "society".

Of course it is a problem for consumers if it bankrupts the company. Healthy company is better than no company. And I mean healthy, not greedy.

Making less doesn't equal to going bankrupt.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#675

Post by rob74 »

rockyj wrote: post #24

This is a total mess IMHO. - The make around 5 billion in revenue per quarter - The problem according to them is profit margin - around 150-160 million So first of all, they are big! Secondly they are not at a loss. They just have a "thin, non-growing margin". So to fix all this they are trimming down, so they can "return to growth" (which I think is ridiculous). Some points - - They are huge business even now - 5 bi…

The times when companies only restructured when they were actually making losses are long gone. Today, if they "underperform" (i.e. they're not as profitable as the stock market thinks they should be), investors want to see blood today rather that tomorrow.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#676

Post by zeratax »

PaulHoule wrote: post #169
TulliusCicero wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a Steam competitor involves making a store that's actually good. All the other major stores/platforms don't really seem to give a shit, to be frank. Steam has like 20x their feature set, and the gap appears to be still growing. If anything, it should be easier to make cool new features when you own the hardware side of the platform experience too, but no, it's Steam that has stuff like remote play together, not…

I don't know if I care about the features, what I do care about is the games and a lean-back experience which is not sweaty. I play games to escape the drudgery of software development and the last thing I want to do is mess with an .INI file. I love the Steam Deck because it feels like a consumer electronics device: it has the reliability of Linux but not the sweat. The Steam Deck is the only device I've seen that w…

yeah like i assume this is better by now, but when gamepass was relatively new i got a free month with my laptop but just installing games would frequently fail, same with updating them. same with epic games for that matter, though not that bad. also at the time the xbox app would install everything in this readonly directory that you couldnt even access with admin rights, which ofc made modding impossible and also after reinstalling windows left me with an external harddrive where i wasnt allowed to delete a huge folder of games... fixed this by mounting it in linux.....

Re: Resetting Xbox

#677

Post by johnnyanmac »

LunaSea wrote: post #667
johnnyanmac wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how you can say that when some of their most recent well received games include Tomodachi life and Rhythm Heaven. Those aren't the kinds of games made from those maximizing bean counters.

Rhythm Heaven is a 18 year old and Tomodachi life is a 13 year old license.

Yes. And an environment like Microsoft wouldn't think a dormant, niche franchise like that would be able to achieve an overwhelming success after 2 generation.

But sure, if you want the last new IP, Nintendo has played it safe with Arms and focused more on bolstering dormant IP's on the switch. With Animal Crossing and Zelda in particular finding new winds. Splatoon was their last huge success as a new IP in 2015.

Labo came in 2018, but I have no idea how to evaluate the success of that.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#678

Post by Krasnol »

Gareth321 wrote: post #655
slg wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a low profit margin a problem for consumers or is it the company's "money grubbery" of not being satisfied with that profit margin that is causing the problem?

When XBOX fires a bunch of people and shutters studios leading to fewer games with worse support, that's a problem for consumers. I think people often forget that in a society we rely on companies making and serving things. They make our food and our medicine and build our homes and make our games. It's a good thing when their finances are healthy. It's a bad thing when they form monopolies and rent-seek.

How is making more and more every fiscal year "healthy"?

This is madness and it doesn't make any sense besides the one case where you pursue a monopoly.

All of this has nothing to do with the consumer of the product besides the fact that he'll get a worse and worse product while simultaneously being forced to pay more and more. Enshitification is aresult of this "healthy" business culture.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#679

Post by urbnspacecowboy »

markus_zhang wrote: post #463

Scott Miller on X said that many, if not most of ID was also let go. https://x.com/ScottApogee/status/2074198967550685268

Some specifics from George Broussard: https://x.com/georgebsocial/status/2074282537946386833

> I've seen comments like "the MS layoffs weren't so bad".

> re: id software.

> Reports are that 50% (95ish of 200) of the studio was laid off. Here are some quotes on other details:

> “Tools, programming (except a couple), Quake Champions team, testing team. All gone.”

> “Yeah seems like all they left was leadership and art/design. I think Xbox forgot quakecon is next month.”

> It really does sound as if id is now a support team for Bethesda/others. Rip idTech, which was amazing. Maybe Machine Games will carry it on or maybe it will be dropped for future games?

> But the read is that id is essentially dead. At least for the time being. Yes, the studio wasn't closed and half still have their jobs. That's great.

> re: the studios set free by MS to be sold or mgmt returned. One view is this is great. For MS they get decent PR for being "good guys". But the truth is that in at least one case (and maybe others), retaining the IP in such a case was written into the original contract when MS purchased them. Second, these studios now are out of the MS lifeboat, on their own, and will have short time to find new deals or funding and they will make it or not. Never mind they sold to MS originally to avoid this grind and be 'safe'. Yes they have a second chance but more layoffs may simply be deferred and outside the current umbrella of today's layoff round, so MS doesn't really get the bad PR of simply shutting studios down. This means continual worry by the employees and stress for mgmt.

> re: Arkane. Same as the above but timing and process is different due to French labor laws, etc.

> The layoffs are still happening. A substantial portion of Obsidian was let go today (near 1/3). Worries that they now don't have the staff to complete current projects. Deep layoffs at Zenimax Online. Even Bethesda or Activision studios were hit (with a minor round and numbers that are small enough that it reads more like "everyone has to take a hit, even the star studios"). More details will emerge, but it's a lot of people.

> So it's bad. Real bad. Good luck to all affected.

Re: Resetting Xbox

#680

Post by isqueiros »

pandaman wrote: post #508
weakened_malloc wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What was Microsoft plan to increase profit? IMO, at the time, it was to buy ABK and make CoD an Xbox exclusive. That clearly didn't play out when everyone screamed about it being (rightly!) anticompetitive, and so they had to resign themselves to accepting that day 1 gamepass exclusive was going to be their way to get people to switch over from PS. That also didn't work. The 'K' part of ABK was also probably going…

Even if they had made it exclusive, $70B is too much for this. CoD sales would fall - not everyone buying it would go out and buy an Xbox, Xbox hardware sales would raise. Let's be optimistic and say every CoD player (including ones who already bought Xbox ) goes out and buys another Xbox and then buys 2 xboxes in the next generation. So it's ~20M more Xboxes sold. To break even on this investment in 10 years MS has…

I already thought the deal was bad to begin with, but if you look at the numbers like this it feels even more catastrophically bad, damn.

This is not even considering they basically bought all the PR issues that came with Blizzard.

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